


Quod Vides Perisse, Perditum Ducas

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: “Sirius, what does Mudblood mean?” he asked. His brother sighed, biting his lip.“You’ll find out soon enough.”





	Quod Vides Perisse, Perditum Ducas

**Author's Note:**

> Title's from Catullo's VIII poem, and it means "What you see dying, consider lost"

“When childood dies, its corpses are called adults.”   
(Brian Aldiss)

For being six years old, he was a sharp kid.   
Everything around him stroke him, made him curious, brought him to ask a million questions.   
And everybody patiently answered him, with that patience dedicated only to someone his age.   
That afternoon, he had gone out with his brother and Andromeda. She, not long since fourteen, was used to spend her time with her younger cousins, for necessity or even for pleasure.   
Regulus and Sirius, on their part, showed to enjoy her company, they idolized her as the ‘older cousin’, the one who joked with them, who took them out, when they couldn’t have done it on their own; the one that, she always showed it, truly loved them.   
They had arrived to a small park close to Grimmauld Place, and the two kids had immediately started running among the trees.   
Life in their house was particularly boring, so they were more than happy to pour out those instincts that, for their age, were more than normal.   
While Sirius went toward the seesaws, asking Andromeda to push him, Regulus stayed next to them, raising his eyes and starting to look around.   
In spite of the little number of years he had spent in the world, he had learnt to recognize the passing of time.   
And those leaves becoming yellow, those light breeze that didn’t taste anymore like summer, and the sky becoming greyer, were signs that he connected to the coming of Fall.   
When he was even younger, he remember he felt sorry for the trees during this season.   
He thought they were dying, that they felt bad, and he hurt.   
Until Andromeda hadn’t explained to him that trees were like the phoenixes in the tales she used to read to him and his brother, that they weren’t dying, they were just regenerating.   
And then Regulus had stopped to feel sad, and had started to love that weird process, to feel the marvel in every single reddish leaf that laid on the cold and moist ground.   
He lowered his eyes, and saw a kid maybe a little younger than him; he was staring at the tree too, his eyes wide open.   
Slowly, Regulus went closer.   
“Hi!” he said, cheerful. The kid turned toward him, scared.   
“Hi.” he whispered, looking at the carpet of leaves at their feet. They stayed silent for a few seconds, then Regulus smiled and got even closer.   
“Don’t worry about them. When spring will come, the trees are gonna have new leaves, more beautiful than these. Like Phoenixes.” he told him, anxious to share such an astounding knowledge.   
The kid raised his eyes on him, more amazed than before.   
“What are phoenixes?” he asked. Regulus was disoriented. How could he not know what phoenixes were?  
He felt sorry for that kid, to whom perhaps nobody used to read tales before going to sleep.   
“Phoenixes are magical creatures, which are reborn from their own ashes.” he explained, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.   
“But... there’s no such thing as magical creatures.” the other replied, without too much certainty.   
Regulus looked shocked; he was about to say that the couldn’t not believe in magical creatures, when he heard his cousin’s voice.   
“Regulus, we’ve got to get back, come on!” she called him, serious, yet always kind. He turned toward the kid, waving at him. He didn’t wave back, staring at him while he went away, as if he couldn’t really believe to what had just happened.   
While they were heading back home, Regulus felt almost euphoric.   
He was happy to have told someone else that trees didn’t die, to have avoided him to suffer like he had.   
And yet, he kept asking himself how was it possible that he didn’t know about magical creatures.   
When they entered the house, he ran to the living room, excited.   
“Mummy, mummy, guess what!” he yelled, escaping his cousin’s grasp.   
“Regulus, how many times do I have to tell you not to run inside the house?” the woman murmured, bringing a hand to her head, as if the kid’s excitement gave her a migraine.   
“I’m sorry mum, I forgot.” he stopped in front of the couch where the woman was sitting, and smiled to her. “Today I met a kid in the park, and I told him what Dromeda told me, that trees don’t die in autumn, that they are born again in spring. Think how weird, he didn’t know what phoenixes are! He also said that magical animals don’t exist. Do you think no one reads fairy tales to him, mummy?” he said, talking fast.   
Walburga, slowly, raised her eyes on her son, then she turned toward Andromeda, who was biting her lips.   
She stood up and grasped Regulus’ arm.   
“You’ve spoken with a filthy Mudblood?” she hissed, tightening her hold.   
Regulus opened his mouth wide, he couldn’t understand why such a reaction. He didn’t have time to say anything, that his mother dragged him in his room, throwing him inside like he was an object. He heard the key rotating violently in the lock, then his mother yelling, probably toward his cousin.   
Involuntary tears start running down his face.   
He wasn’t crying so much for his mother’s reaction, but for the frustration of not understanding what he had done.   
He was still thinking about it, when he heard the key again; the hope of it being his mother, coming to apologize and to tell him she had been wrong, shattered the moment he saw his brother’s head peeking out.   
He dried his tears, in a daft gesture of shyness.   
Sirius smirked, without showing any sorrow for him.   
“Congratulations, Reg. You always have to talk, don’t you?” Regulus gritted his teeth, trying not to cry all over again, and looked at his brother.   
“Sirius... I’ve done nothing wrong!” he protested. The other didn’t answer, but shook his head.   
They kept quiet for a few minutes, when the youngest decided to speak again.   
“Sirius, what does Mudblood mean?” he asked. His brother sighed, biting his lip.   
“You’ll find out soon enough.” he answered, leaving right after that.   
Regulus still couldn’t understand what he had done wrong, nor he was any closer to understand the meaning of that word, with such a bitter sound.   
He just felt he wouldn’t have liked to find out. 

~

He turned around in his bed, agitated.   
The breath was too quick, as his heartbeat was.   
He stood up, exasperated by the lack of sleep. Getting closer to the window, his steps grew slower.   
The trees’ bare branches came in front of him, dark and threatening, as an obscure omen.   
It was well into autumn, and for Regulus it wasn’t enough anymore to know that in spring leaves would’ve given new life to those miserable beings, which could barely be called living.   
And the cause to that apprehension was that he wasn’t going to see them.   
He wasn’t going to reach that spring, he would’ve brought with him into the oblivion of death those lifeless branches, for which he felt such a strong empathy.   
In that moment, he heard the creepy sound of a key being turned inside a lock, slowly.   
His heart lost a beat.   
It’s just Kreacher locking the doors he told himself, not so much convinced.   
It hadn’t taken him much, after that afternoon, to make his door’s key disappear.   
It reminded him of a kid that didn’t exist anymore, who that very same day had ended a childhood lasted too damn little.   
“What does Mudblood mean?”  
His brother, that traitor, was right: he had found out soon enough, and after he had been explained the true meaning of it, he had also been taught to despise all it stood for.   
And he had, with the same rabid certainty that belonged to the Blacks since generations.   
He wasn’t outdone, he didn’t want to disappoint his mother, he didn’t want to be punished again for something he couldn’t understand wholly.   
With time, that hatred had become a part of him.   
And yet that night, Regulus felt his mind’s troubles become more pressing, and all he believed him was crumbling down, unavoidable.   
He stared once again at those bare and apparently dead trees.   
And he felt sorry once more, for them and for that kid who didn’t know what phoenixes were.   
But still, he knew he should’ve felt sorry only for himself, for he had lost in time and hate that capability of marvelling for what the world could give to him, every single time he looked at it.   
He wanted to get in the bed, and listen once more to the fairy tales of Andromeda, a traitor as well, managing to sleep peacefully once again.   
But he laid there, abandoned and sleepless, because he had forgotten what believing in fairy tales meant.   
The happy ending, he realized, didn’t exist for those who didn’t know how to be children anymore.   
The phoenix and the trees were going to be born again.   
He wasn’t.


End file.
